UV decontamination of personal protective equipment with idle laboratory biosafety cabinets during the COVID-19 pandemic

  1. Davis T. Weaver
  2. Benjamin D. McElvany
  3. Vishhvaan Gopalakrishnan
  4. Kyle J. Card
  5. Dena Crozier
  6. Andrew Dhawan
  7. Mina N. Dinh
  8. Emily Dolson
  9. Nathan Farrokhian
  10. Masahiro Hitomi
  11. Emily Ho
  12. Tanush Jagdish
  13. Eshan S. King
  14. Jennifer L. Cadnum
  15. Curtis J. Donskey
  16. Nikhil Krishnan
  17. Gleb Kuzmin
  18. Ju Li
  19. Jeff Maltas
  20. Jinhan Mo
  21. Julia Pelesko
  22. Jessica A. Scarborough
  23. Geoff Sedor
  24. Enze Tian
  25. Gary C. An
  26. Sean A. Diehl
  27. Jacob G. Scott

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Abstract

Personal protective equipment (PPE) is crucially important to the safety of both patients and medical personnel, particularly in the event of an infectious pandemic. As the incidence of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) increases exponentially in the United States and many parts of the world, healthcare provider demand for these necessities is currently outpacing supply. In the midst of the current pandemic, there has been a concerted effort to identify viable ways to conserve PPE, including decontamination after use. In this study, we outline a procedure by which PPE may be decontaminated using ultraviolet (UV) radiation in biosafety cabinets (BSCs), a common element of many academic, public health, and hospital laboratories. According to the literature, effective decontamination of N95 respirator masks or surgical masks requires UV-C doses of greater than 1 Jcm −2 , which was achieved after 4.3 hours per side when placing the N95 at the bottom of the BSCs tested in this study. We then demonstrated complete inactivation of the human coronavirus NL63 on N95 mask material after 15 minutes of UV-C exposure at 61 cm (232 μW cm −2 ). Our results provide support to healthcare organizations looking for methods to extend their reserves of PPE.

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  1. Version published to 10.1371/journal.pone.0241734
  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.03.25.20043489v3 on medRxiv
  3. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.03.25.20043489: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Inspired by the protocol developed by Lowe et al., we propose a workflow to optimize the utilization of institutional resources:17 Limitations: Despite the measures taken here to ensure adequate decontamination of PPE, following this protocol by no means guarantees complete sterilization or decontamination. This method should be implemented only if PPE must be reused. FFRs contain multiple layers of filtration, and respiratory droplets may penetrate into the inner layers. Though UV-C light has been shown to transmit into and through FFR materials, the transmittance of light ranges from 23-50% through the outer layer depending on the model of the FFR.6 Therefore, the ability for UVGI to thoroughly sanitize FFRs may vary based on the ability for UV-C light to penetrate through to the internal filtering medium, which contributes the most filtration ability. Virologic testing to determine the degree of decontamination of the inner mask layers is ongoing. Previous in vitro studies imply that the shape of the inactivation-curve is modulated by the surface being decontaminated. Generally, studies find a much lower dose needed to inactivate virus on gel or plate-based media compared to FFRs such as the N95 mask.2,3 The feasibility of our approach for decontaminating FFRs is therefore limited by the long-time duration (at least 4.3 hours per side) needed to achieve a germicidal UV-C dose on the floor of a BSC. Variance in received dose due to the shape of the FFRs may also contribute ...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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  4. Version published to 10.1101/2020.03.25.20043489v2 on medRxiv
  5. Version published to 10.1101/2020.03.25.20043489v1 on medRxiv